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The Obama and the McCain campaigns seemed to agree on one thing Wednesday: Barack Obama is ahead.

In Washington, Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, laid out for reporters an aggressive, confident—even cocky– strategy for a Democratic victory in November. He said the campaign sees 18 battleground states, including some traditional swing states—Ohio, Iowa, Missouri–but many that have been reliably Republican for a long time, including Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Georgia. In assessing each state, Plouffe made the case that Obama is competitive or slightly ahead.
Obama_presser_art_400_20080625182157.jpg
Barack Obama listens to a question during a news conference in Chicago Wednesday. (AP)

“We have a fantastic organization” in Alaska, he said, in a typical assessment. In Virginia and North Carolina, there are lots of unregistered black and young professional voters who would vote for Obama. Explaining Indiana, a state that has routinely voted Republican, he said, “This is a place where we ask you to reorient your thinking.”

Plouffe said that the campaign considers just four states that Democrat John Kerry won in 2004 to be battlegrounds: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. The rest of the states on the Obama battleground list were all taken by President Bush. John McCain will be playing defense, Plouffe argued, while Obama makes inroads into the GOP heartland.

He went on to review polling on women, Hispanics and independents. Guess what? It all looks good for Obama.

Not only that, but Obama’s campaign is so confident, so organized and so well-funded, that it will mount organizations in all 50 states, with volunteers in non-competitive states making phone calls into swing states and helping down-ballot Democrats. For instance, in Texas, Plouffe said, the Obama campaign can help elect Democrats to the state legislature, which will draw new congressional districts in 2010.

If you want links to the 12% and 15% nationwide margins over the past couple of days I can provide them. These leads are anything but meaningless, if Barack Obama's supertracker gets above 10% he will a hold a lead that is historically impossible to overcome for McCain.

If Obama really holds the lead these polls are suggesting McCain stands a less than 5% chance at winning the election.

You do know that thousands of conservatives across the country love to mess with these polls, because you stupid libs put so much stock in them. Then when we win on election day we get all that free entertainment watching you guys throw your hissy-fits. The added benefit of course is that it always makes the left look like sore losers. It's all a brilliant Rovian plot.

Anything but meaningless? You might be interested in this article I read this morning. From the article, 2nd to last paragraph last page:

The day the Democratic convention ended in San Francisco in 1984, the Newsweek poll showed Walter Mondale 18 points ahead of President Ronald Reagan. Mondale ended up getting clobbered, 49 states to one.

:eek:

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
~Winston Churchill

These polls are meaningless. You have to look at the internals. Most internals are inherently weighted toward a liberal bias. Having done more than my share of actual polling, three components come into play.

(1.) the sampling size of the pool,
(2.) the breakdown of the pool variables (% Democrats,%Republicans,%Independents), and
(3.) the actual inquiries and their design. (Most questions are designed by a candidate to a preconceived outcome.)

The liberal bias comes into play when a poll is skewed in favor to democrats on an assumption that there are more Democrats than Republicans. If this was true, Democrats would never lose an election. People lie in polls and have to be discounted as such. Most people are either conservative or liberal to various degrees and a well designed poll will be balanced in the choices presented in a balanced question format.

True. So what you do is give the school staff the power to stop whatever happens. If it's verbal teasing, you give them the power to tell the kids to stop it. If it's rock throwing, you give them the...